Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Well Hello

It’s, uh, been a while. Anyone still out there?
Is this thing on? Bueller? (Sorry.)

So I haven’t written here in more than a year. That feels
strange. I started this blog back in 2005, when I barely knew what blogs were,
and ever since then it’s been a constant companion, a small but semi-permanent
recording of my life in real time, patches and pieces and recipes and photos,
never regularly updated but always present. Always something to return to.

And so here I am! Returning! The last year and a bit has
been wild. I moved to the Hudson Valley for a job. A phenomenal but an intense
job. It consumed me and all my hours and most of my life. I loved it. But now
I’m returning to Boston for another
job, one that I’m likewise wildly excited about. I missed Boston, and am happy
to be coming home.

What else. Iwroteabit. I read as much as I could. Ieditedalot. I made new friends and reconnected with old. I spent a lot of
time flying to Texas, trying to make a long distance relationship work. I cooked
only a little, but drank, well, like a journalist. I ran on trails in
the woods, early in the fog-ridden mornings, and discovered that if I forced
myself to both sign up and pay for the evening hot yoga class before noon, I
might actually attend. I survived a breakup, mainly by watching Jane Austin-inspired movies on my laptop over and over for a month.

Many weekends I took the Amtrak from my tiny upstate town to
NYC, hurtling along the Hudson River to attend parties and book readings and
dinners with my brother, Ben, perched at the bar of one funky restaurant or
another downtown. Sometimes I went to the city just for the particular thrill
that comes with being anonymous.

When I finished my last day of work, I went to Maine for a
week by myself. I wanted the scent of the ocean and the sound of crickets at night to rid my brain of the static built up over the last year.

After four days alone, I was happy to spend
time with my friends Steph and Kathy, both who live nearby. On that Thursday
night Steph and I shared some of the best deviled eggs I’ve tasted at The Black Birch in Kittery. On that Friday night, Kathy cooked. We drank
rosé and walked around her sweeping garden, all tomatoes and potatoes and
asparagus fronds. She grilled a huge pan of paella and we ate it in the yard as
the sun went down. Later that night we listened to a New Orleans-style brass
band in a one-room theater space in town, and I sat in the back and tapped my
foot and watched an older, white-haired man dance magnificently in the
center of the room, alone.

14 comments:

Hello! Welcome back. Sounds like your time away was time well spent. I've been meaning to get back into blogging, too, after a whole summer of not writing or taking pictures. It's nice that it's always there, that there are no rules about coming and going, and that no matter how empty it might seem upon return, there's always at least someone there, listening.

Ah, great stuff. I discovered your blog very recently and left a comment very recently on your last post (2013) and must have sensed that you would pick up blogging again soon. Coincidentally, my latest post is on madeleines :-)

MOLLY!!!! I have checked your blog every week or two since you left it, and imagine how thrilled I was tonight to click over out of habit and find not one but TWO posts from you! You dear lovely writer, your words are as evocative as ever, and it sounds like the past year has been many many many things, and still happening as we type. I am so glad to read your words. Welcome back :)

Welcome back! And welcome back to Boston! What's your new project at ATK? I'll have to head over to Black Birch to try it – between that and Anneke Jans, and a few others I'm still surprised at how different the dining scene is in Kittery compared to my childhood begging for the Warren's salad bar.